Palestinian generations unite to tell Downing Street current conflict was ‘made in Britain’

When Munib Al Masri (91) was not yet a teenager in the mid-1940s, he was shot in the leg by British forces while demonstrating near his Nablus home in the then British Mandate of Palestine.

“I was shouting ‘down with Balfour’,” says the wealthy industrialist, referring to the 1917 Balfour declaration, a promise by the British government to Zionists to help them establish a Jewish homeland on the land where Israel now stands.

“And then they shot me.”

Almost seven decades later in 2011, his grandson, also called Munib Al Masri (37), was shot in the back by Israeli forces while demonstrating on the Lebanese border.

“It was an unarmed protest,” says the younger Al Masri. “We didn’t try to cross the border or anything. But I was shot. Others were shot. Some were killed that day.”

As a result, he is now in a wheelchair.

“I suffered a huge change in my life. Personally, I can forgive. But they [the Israelis] have done the same thing over and over again to many others.”

Last week, the two men led a delegation to Downing Street to present a legal petition to the home of the British prime minister, Keir Starmer. It urges his government to take responsibility for what, they allege, were the crimes Britain committed in the land of Palestine before the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Read the full article on The Irish Times here.